The Least Word

EAD Basics 6: Text Division

Having gone over the <frontmatter> tag last time, this post is for the tag <div>

<div> designates subdivisions of the text in the <frontmatter> and uses <head> to show the purpose.

It, likewise has its own list of elements it can contain, ranging from more divisions like it, to addresses, lists, notes, or tables.

Examples of <div> :

<frontmatter>
            <titlepage>[...]</titlepage>
            <div>
            <head>Acknowledgements</head>
                <p>The University of California, Irvine Libraries wishes to
                acknowledge the generosity of the family of Edgar Holden for an endowment
                in support of the processing and maintenance of this collection and the
                University of California Office of the President for grant funding in
                support of the encoding of this and other finding aids using the Encoded
                Archival Description standard.</p>
            </div> . . .
        </frontmatter>

and

 <frontmatter>
            <titlepage>
                <titleproper>Inventory of the Rietta Hines Herbert Papers, 1940-1969</titleproper>
                <author>Processed by: Debra Carter</author>
                <publisher>Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture<lb/>
                The New York Public Library</publisher>
                <date>August, 1977</date>
                &schtp;
                <p> &copy; <date>1999 </date> The New York Public
                Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.  All rights reserved.</p>
            </titlepage>
            <div>
                <head>Preface</head>
                <p>This inventory is one of several prepared as a part of the archival
                preservation program at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture,
                a research division of The New York Public Library.</p>
                <p>The Schomburg archival preservation program involves the organization
                and preservation of primary source material held by the Center and of significance
                to the study of the Black Experience. It furthermore includes the preparation of
                detailed inventories of these records, making the information contained therein
                accessible as well as available to scholars.</p>
                <p>The necessary staff and supplies for this program were made available
                through a combination of Library, National Endowment for the Humanities grant,
                and State of New York grant funds.</p>
            </div>
        </frontmatter>

Does anyone know who the figures in this image might be? I'm tempted to say the one on the right might be Mark Twain, but I'm not sure.

A Break from EAD: Back to Indexing

Well, I have managed to encounter something I truly was not expecting with my DePol Engravings. Of the images I was tasked with describing, I have discovered that this image has absolutely no information in the digital archive notes. I know it's an engraving of a building. Somewhere. Some time. Beyond that...I really don't know what to put for many of the fields on this one.

EAD Basics 5:

Having covered <eadheader> in my last post, I'll continue with <frontmatter>, which bundles together preface text found before the actual Archival Description (which is in the <archdesc> tag). The tags it contains tend to matters providing information about the creation, use, or publication of the aid itself, rather than anything to do with the contents thereof.

It can contain two subsequent tags:

<div> - optional, contains text divisions

<titlepage> - Optional, contains what it sounds like it contains.

Here is an example of the <frontmatter> tag in use:

<frontmatter>
        <titlepage>
            <titleproper>Register of the Gibbons (Stuart C.) Papers,
                <date>1955-1964</date>
            </titleproper>
            <num>Collection number: Ms28</num>
            <publisher>San Joaquin County Historical Society and Museum
                <lb/>
                <extptr actuate="onload" show="embed entityref="sjmlogo">
                <lb/>
            Lodi, California</publisher>
            &tp-cstoh;
            <list type="deflist">
                <defitem>
                    <label>Processed by: </label>
                    <item>Don Walker</item>
                </defitem>
                <defitem>
                    <label>Date Completed: </label>
                    <item>1997</item>
                </defitem>
                <defitem>
                    <label>Encoded by: </label>
                    <item>Don Walker</item>
                </defitem>
            </list>
            <p>&copy; 2000 San Joaquin County Historical Society &amp; Museum. All rights reserved.</p>
        </titlepage>
    </frontmatter>

EAD Basics, Part 4:

Last post, I discussed the <ead> tag briefly. In that post I meantioned the <eadheader> tag was a required tag that was nested within the <ead> tag.

One thing I forgot to post then (which I will add to said post later, is the list of minimum required elements for an instance of EAD.

Moving to the <eadheader> tag, it's another wrapper element, another strictly structural tag. Because a lot of the identification and file description elements which it can contain are pretty vital to creating a searchable set of metadata, it itself is a required tag.

It can contain four subsequent elements (this being XML, the order they appear in is important):

<eadid> - mandatory

<filedesc> - mandatory

<profiledesc> - optional

<revisiondesc> - optional

In the vein of the minimum valid content example for the <ead> tag mentioned above, here is such an example for the <eadheader> tag:

<eadheader>
    <eadid>[...]</eadid>
    <filedesc>
        <titlestmt>
            <titleproper>[...]</titleproper>
        </titlestmt>
    </filedesc>
</eadheader>

EAD Basics, Part 3:

EAD is hierarchical because its area of concern is organized by hierarchical principles. The hierarchy of its subject matter is reflected quite well by its nested series of tags.

In practice, EAD has three distinctive key tags which create the overall structure of an iteration of EAD.

The first of these is the <ead> tag. Its primary function in it is to provide a structural frame in which the various other tags that provide detailed information about or structure to the informational contents of the finding aid being encoded.

There are three tags / elements which are contained within the nesting of the <ead> tag.

<eadheader> : A required tag

<frontmatter> : An optional tag

<archdesc> : Another required tag.

Here is an example of the minimal content required for a valid use of this tag:

<ead>
    <eadheader>
        <eadid>[...]</eadid>
        <filedesc>
            <titlestmt>
                <titleproper>[...]</titleproper>
            </titlestmt>
        </filedesc>
    </eadheader>
    <archdesc level="fonds">
        <did>[...]</did>
        <dsc type="combined">[...]</dsc>
    </archdesc>
</ead>

EAD Basics, Part 2: MaRC's archival equivalent

The Function of EAD

There are lots of them. 146 separate Elements

http://www.loc.gov/ead/ is the official website.

As an XML DTD, EAD is structured via a series of nested tags, creating hierarchical metadata.

It serves to encode archival finding aids

Think the Archival equivalent of Union Catalogs.

Intended to create interoperable, universal encoding principles to allow similar cooperation as MaRC-encoded union catalogs do for libraries.

EAD vs MaRC

· both are encoding standards to provide descriptive and structural metadata to collections of information or materials.

· Both enable interoperability and unionization of searchable databases.

· MaRC-encoded union catalogs tend to be organized based principally upon the item level of organization, as it is both the initial level with which the cataloger applying the standard interacts, and because it is the principle goal of most MaRC users.

· EAD finding aids tend to approach materials from the opposite end of the scale. Archives tend to interact with materials from a many-to-few perspective, and many archival users interact with the archives starting at the collection level and narrowing it down only after that.